Whisper Aero Reveals JetFoil™ for NextGeneration Runway Independent Aircraft at SAE AeroTech

Whis­per Aero CEO Mark Moore has revealed details about its Jet­Foil inte­gra­tion for next-gen­er­a­tion run­way inde­pen­dent air­craft dur­ing a keynote made today (Tues­day) at SAE AeroTech in West Palm Beach, Flori­da.

By inte­grat­ing Whisper’s elec­tric duct­ed fans into the lead­ing edges of wings, Moore told del­e­gates it can enable con­ven­tion­al, short and ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing in the same form fac­tor with­out com­plex tilt mech­a­nisms or sep­a­rate lift­ing propul­sion sys­tems. This inno­va­tion unlocks a rad­i­cal shift to sim­ple, com­pact, fast, safe run­way inde­pen­dent air­craft and oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties.

The announce­ment coin­cid­ed with Moore’s accep­tance of the V/STOL F.E. New­bold award, which recog­nis­es out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the advance­ment and real­iza­tion of pow­ered lift flight. Pre­vi­ous award win­ners have includ­ed those respon­si­ble for ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing sys­tems for the F‑35, AV-8A Har­ri­er, V‑22 Osprey, and SpaceX rock­ets.

A press release released fol­low­ing the keynote pre­sen­ta­tion said: “As Whis­per matured its Ultra­Qui­et™, effi­cient elec­tric duct­ed fans, the team nat­u­ral­ly sought the best way to inte­grate its propul­sion sys­tems for air­craft of all types.

“Unlike tur­bo­fans, pro­pellers, or oth­er forms of elec­tric propul­sion, Whisper’s elec­tric duct­ed fans are scale invari­ant with respect to thrust. They oper­ate at low engine pres­sure ratios for lev­els of propul­sive effi­cien­cy greater than 90%, even at high speeds and com­pact sizes. Whisper’s elec­tric duct­ed fans also fea­ture low swirl, gen­er­at­ing more con­cen­trat­ed thrust.”

The com­bi­na­tion of these fea­tures enables greater lev­els of dis­tri­b­u­tion with­out the loss­es or noise of oth­er dis­trib­uted propul­sion sys­tems. Under­stand­ing the unique ben­e­fits of its propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy, Whis­per designed Jet­Foil, a propul­sion inno­va­tion that direct­ly embeds and blends mul­ti­ple of its elec­tric duct­ed fans into the lead­ing edges of wing air­foils for clean inflow.

The jets exhaust­ed from the array of propul­sors com­bine into a clean and uni­form jet sheet, accel­er­at­ing air over the upper sur­face of the wing for a pas­sive lift aug­men­ta­tion solu­tion that is stall proof. This result­ing blown wing is high­ly resis­tant to gust or tur­bu­lence, achiev­ing max coef­fi­cients of lift as high as 40 at 15 knots for air­craft with a thrust­to-weight of 0.5 and wing load­ing of 25 lbf/ft2.

The press release con­tin­ued: “Jet­Foil draws upon learn­ings first devel­oped with upper sur­face blow­ing on NASA’s Qui­et Short-Haul Research Air­craft, a demon­stra­tor air­craft Moore worked on ear­li­er in his career. Whisper’s Jet­Foil advances the upper sur­face blow­ing con­cept by allow­ing the entire span of a wing to be blown through an array of propul­sors with­out heat, swirl, tur­bu­lence, or addi­tion­al par­a­site drag. The low noise char­ac­ter­is­tics of Whis­per propul­sion sys­tems are enhanced with Jet­Foil, allow­ing for jet noise to bounce off the upper sur­face of the wing, away from com­mu­ni­ties.

“Through con­tin­ued test­ing, the Whis­per team dis­cov­ered that its Jet­Foils could enable flight for con­ven­tion­al, short, and ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing with just a sim­ple flap. The high­ly uni­form, high veloc­i­ty exhaust allows for­Coan­da flow turn­ing with nat­ur­al flow attach­ment. This is in stark con­trast to oth­er VTOL propul­sion tech­nolo­gies that redi­rect air with com­plex tilt­ing propul­sors (e.g., V‑22 Osprey), force­ful­ly redi­rect­ed flow with sys­tems of flaps (e.g., Ryan Ver­ti­plane), or both (e.g., Lil­i­um Jet Flap).”

Unlike pri­or attempts at flow turn­ing, Whisper’s Jet­Foil allows for 90° of flow turn­ing with
over 95% turn­ing effi­cien­cy (defined as the amount of thrust pro­duced after the flow is turned) and
greater than 170° of flow turn­ing with over 70% turn­ing effi­cien­cy.

This lev­el of robust­ness enables a wide realm of new run­way inde­pen­dent air­craft and oper­a­tional
capa­bil­i­ties. Jet­Foil pack­ages thrust for ver­ti­cal, short, and con­ven­tion­al flight modes in the same
form fac­tor, avoid­ing the need for air­craft to pack­age sep­a­rate pow­ered lift propul­sion (e.g., F‑35B)
and free­ing up space for addi­tion­al pay­loads.

Jet­Foil also enables near VTOL flight with mere­ly a 50’ ground roll to fol­low typ­i­cal heli­copter take­off and land­ing pro­files that clear a 50 ft obsta­cle in less than 300 ft hor­i­zon­tal dis­tances. The 50’ ground roll avoids the need to take­off in a pow­ered lift mode that forces air­craft to gen­er­ate 1.2 times the thrust of the aircraft’s max­i­mum weight. Instead, less than half of the thrust-to-weight would be required, dou­bling pay­load capac­i­ty and extend­ing range.

In this new V/STOL Wright Broth­ers Era, Whis­per propul­sion inte­grat­ed into Jet­Foils unlocks con­cepts for the future of run­way inde­pen­dent flight for civ­il and defense mar­kets.

Whis­per is con­tin­u­ing to test and val­i­date its propul­sors and Jet­Foil on the ground and in flight togeth­er with the US Air Force, US Navy, and NASA across mul­ti­ple con­tracts. Whis­per is now part­ner­ing with OEMs to rapid­ly design, build, and fly air­craft pro­to­types pro­pelled by Jet­Foil over the com­ing year.